It is so unbelievably sad for me to read the facts of that case: The drug addict's 18 month old baby escaped from an apartment and climbed down three stories to the street, "saving his own life". He was nearly starved, had broken bones, burns, and infected sores. This lady has since had two more children (2 years old, 10 months) with some guy that has two other children, and now she's having a third. She says she's turned her life around, and if she goes to jail then the other children will be without a mother.

On and on it goes. I'm touched far more deeply by the murder of a child than an adult. Part of it is the unfairness inherent in the murder of a small child. They are so weak, so trusting, so easy to fool. The murderers barely had to invest any effort in ending these lives, on a whim, in a moment of rage, to punish, or just for entertainment. Some of the murderers try to kill themselves afterward but fail, showing how incompetent they were and how manageable the victims were. It's unfair, but there is a tragedy beyond that!

The Larger Tragedy

Young children are a very special class of people know don't know what evil is. Totally innocent. Lying, politics, racism, nationalism: it's all for the future when their brains get complicated enough to plan deceptions and remember what they're supposed to be for and against. Leave it to sophisticated adults while kids live lives many of us truly want, playing, reading a book with mommy and daddy, learning the simple rules of life like "Always say thank-you" and feeling proud about it, or watching princesses or dinosaurs on tv.

Young children have no options in their tiny universe. What would it be if you only knew one or two people in the whole world, or you'de only ever seen a few faces, or you didn't even know that you were a person too? Imagine you didn't know how to use a phone, didn't know where anything was outside your home, maybe didn't even know how to speak and didn't understand the language. Imagine you couldn't predict or feel that you were going to the washroom, and couldn't tell anyone that you were sitting in it and it made your skin feel itchy. Imagine if you didn't know how to eat or drink, maybe didn't even know what the feeling of being hungry and thirsty meant; just discomfort but not how to treat it?

Now imagine if the only good thing you ever knew, the thing you never doubted, then thing you couldn't live without turned on you: Looked into your eyes then pushed your head under water or tied a rope around your neck or hit you with sticks or threw you off a balcony or left you in the snow and walked away as you cried until you froze.

Parents, trusted and loved by their babies, will never have such purity of trust and love given to them again. Even their own children, over time, will learn that humans fail and humans lie and humans do bad things -- parents included. Children will divide their love towards other people, adventure, money, pride, pleasure. The purity of the parent-child relationship will cloud, turning from crystal to muddy water.

Parents often say how perfect their little baby was when it was just born. I never understood that. My baby was born wrinkly and slimy, it had that umbilical chord thingy attached to it, and it crying immediately. Is that perfect? I didn't think so. But as I wrote this post, I got to thinking about my kids and all the murdered kids and why I was so shaken. The reason is because children are perfect in their blank slate and forced total trust in their parents. When we're born we are the most perfect we ever will be, starting down a lifelong struggle, if we choose to accept it, to get back to that initial perfection even a little. When someone kills or hurts a child they are destroying the best, most flawless thing they possibly destroy. If people exist who don't feel the sense to protect that, then what hope can we have for the rest of our crooked and dirty world?

Comments

I have to say that I agree with you 100%. If you have children, these people that hurt their children are monsters and should be punished equally. My son is 3 years old and I get frustrated with him. But he honestly is pure of heart. He is interested in life and loves his mommy and daddy. There is nothing else. He wants to be with us and no one else. He is everything to us. I can't imagine ever hurting him out of malice.

You have written a great article and I will try to get this out to people. It deserves to be read. Awesome.

My 10-year-old said it perfectly on a poster for Child Abuse Prevention Month. She drew a picture of a child holding an angel ornament in her hand. Behind the child is a picture of the devil. Her poster says, "You were a child once. Don't hurt yourself."

And I agree, if we can get even close to the child-like idealism and perfection of children, we will be a better society. This article breaks my heart.

Your daughter is much more perceptive than many. Her advice applies at all levels, not just abusers. How about the people who are annoyed by a noisy child? Well excuse me, I'm pretty sure that everyone cried from time to time as a baby so just open the mind and relax!

Okay, wow, I'm right there with you on this front. It is beyond the beyond to even consider these awful things that are happening to children. I agree it's much harder to hear about a child being hurt or killed than an adult. It's why I can't really watch shows like Nancy Grace - although part of me is drawn into it because I have a need to understand how people can be so evil and sick. Anyway thanks for stopping by my blog. See you in cyber-blogo-space or whatever it is nowadays. (-:

Wow, you've gotten to the heart of the matter well. I feel sick just sitting here reading your post. A solution must be found. Your provoking thoughts and resulting images of the children will stay in my mind all day.

It's an interesting post, but having covered a crime beat since 1988, I have to say these stories are, BY FAR, the exception. These are the extreme and rare cases that involve extreme abuse or retaliation over domestic/child custody issues.

The sad fact is, when it comes to mothers who kill, they are either depressed or overwhelmed, or suffering from a pregnancy that occurred as a result of molestation, incest or rape. The media--of which I am a part--does not do a great job at emphasizing this fact, when these cases make the headlines.

Nor do we, as a society, do enough to speak up and out about the silent issues of child abuse, domestic violence, or overwhelmed mothers--a category that La'Shanda Armstrong falls into. I covered her funeral for The Daily Beast, and wrote an op-ed piece about how I connected to her, at the same site, and I really think that it's time we had a national dialogue on this critical topic!

You wanted to kill your children as well, I read your story! I could feel your struggle, rather a shadow of how painful it must have been. In the end, nothing seems to be anybody's fault. The overwhelmed mother blames the father, but the father's parents and society obviously failed him as well. As your children might have been your victims, you were his victim, and he was the victim of others. The cycle continues without identifiable cause or solution. There can be no excuse for murdering helpless children just as there can be no excuse for the cause of the murderer's torture. Tell me, why didn't you think of killing the man instead of the children and yourself? Did you tell anyone? What happened when you stood up to him? Most of all, how could gotten you help at the time you needed it? Maybe we have to start something that seeks these parents on the edge.